Having struggled in a wet qualifying session, Ferrari started from the third row due to power unit penalties demoting the two Red Bull drivers. With Kimi Raikkonen starting from fifth and Sebastian Vettel sixth, Vettel quickly rose to third behind Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas but could make no further progress.

After watching Daniel Ricciardo climb from 16th on the grid to finish fourth ahead of Raikkonen – even threatening Vettel, who was half a minute adrift of Hamilton – Marchionne believes Ferrari got its set-up wrong.

"I think we just screwed up," Marchionne is quoted as telling RTL. "The set-up for the car was wrong. I think we underestimated the circuit.

"I think we screwed up from Belgium, from Spa, into here. Now, we need to go back to the factory and find out which way the car went sideways. But we will be back in Singapore."

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was also left surprised by Ferrari's lack of pace, but insists he won't judge his team's rivals based on its performance on Sunday.

"Emotions run high when you have a bad day; you can't hide it," Wolff said. "For me, it looks like this weekend Ferrari has a step back, somehow. I think we were very solid but they haven't performed in the way everyone expected.

"Red Bull starting from the back of the grid, almost finishing P3 – there's just something that is out of sync here, something is not how it should be, so I can understand they're upset about it."

And Wolff admitted he did not expect to be so far clear of Ferrari on race pace based on the lap times from Friday's practice sessions at Monza.

"As per our analysis based on the Friday long runs, we thought they would be closer considering their Spa performance. I cannot tell you what the gap was but certainly, 30-plus seconds is something that is an outlier."